The Volkswagen Bug that Runs on Human Waste
13 Aug
We tend to forget about our waste once it has been um… dispensed with, flushing it away for someone else to deal with. But what if you could power your car with human waste thus reducing the amount of pollution you create and the amount of money you spend on driving? Lots of cars in the UK currently run on liquid natural gas (LNG) but could compressed natural gas (CNG) be just as effective?
Wessex Water Plc are a water and sewage-treatment firm so they have access more human waste than they know what to do with, until now. They have recently had a Volkswagen Beetle converted to run on compressed natural gas from their Bristol sewage treatment works. They are running a six month trial to test the viability of powering their entire fleet from small cars right up to larger vans with natural gas.
The processing plant is already partially powered by electricity created from natural gas and Wessex Water even creates enough power to sell some back to the National Grid. Releasing biogas back into the atmosphere would be harmful as Methane is a ‘greenhouse’ gas so the company wanted to use the excess they created. They say the car runs well:
“We decided to power a vehicle on the gas offering a sustainable alternative to using fossil fuels which we so heavily rely on in the UK. If you were to drive the car you wouldn’t know it was powered by biogas as it performs just like any conventional car. It is probably the most sustainable car around.” – Mohammed Saddiq
Unfortunately powering cars using human created biogas is not an entirely scalable idea, it takes the combined output of 70 homes to create enough fuel to power the VW bug for 1 year. If you consider that most households have a least one car or van there just isn’t enough poo being produced.



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